


The Forgotten Princess

by t0mi



Category: Towergirls (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27715598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0mi/pseuds/t0mi
Summary: There were stories of a hooded figure that would try to recruit other knights into a group called “The Band of the Moon”. Otherwise, in payment in the form of a drink you could let this hooded figure tell you stories of her glory days, and sometimes she would talk about the days following her imprisonment in the tower, but also how in those days that she didn’t feel like a princess and she only felt like a knight instead. How she had lost nearly everything, how she had felt deranged and forgotten and worthless and alone and she had to retreat all the time because of it. You could see her face but not her eyes in the candlelight and you can see her lips purse tight and her head lower down.The young girl with long blue hair stood on the roof looking up at the stars. A princess with no kingdom to claim. No knight to rescue her. That’s how it’s always been. Now she has a broadsword in her hands.





	The Forgotten Princess

The Forgotten Princess

When she was a little girl, the Princess would sometimes count to the highest number she’d known after the Queen tucked her under the bear-fur sheets. It was during these sometimes that she hungered for exploration—to satisfy those fidgety feet. When she heard the faintest sound of a human bellow snuffing out a lamp, the Princess would’d known that she was in the clear. Like a cat, she slipped off the furry bedsheets, and slowly edged tenderfeet across the stone floor to where the moonlight spilled from the window. The orchestra of the night—torchbugs buzzing around the dragonberry gardens below, the whisper of the wind through the milky fields, the croak of a grasshopper here and there, and in the distance a whiff of the pine leaves of the High Forest rustling in the midnight—sounded much richer and much better when the Princess leaned out her window. But she was looking for the richest feature that elicited no sound, a treasure so valuable that no pirate ever dared to plunder, but what laymen make song and stuff of ever since forever.

The Princess sat on the windowsill and rotated her body onto the little stone edge, where there was just enough room for her to side-step to the nearby secondary roof. Using particular stones and a wooden limb that protruded from the house wall, she scaled the cliff as an adventurer would, and met the eaves of the shallow roof. The King would always try to make her scared by telling tales of bandit attacks in the dead of night, invasions of bonemen in the twilight mist, and wicked wizards that conjured thunderous clouds shaped like forge anvils that wreak havoc like tendrils of Hell, but the Princess was not afraid of anything.

As the invisible turbulence frolicked around the Princess, billowing her nightgown and chilling her bone, she helped herself to the serene sights. Omitted from the usual cacophony of the gods-be-good town-crier, the farm animals, the buzz of the tavern, and the merchant wagons that make thoroughfare here, the Princess’s village was very peaceful, and very quiet. The late-night book-readers (such amusing inventions) kept their fireplaces lit, and cottage chimneys spouted a stream of hot air that wafted around in company of the moon up above. The Princess looked up, and saw the black sky bejeweled. A clear night, a starry night. A myriad of sparks that faintly shone across the high obsidian ceiling was reflected in the bewildered eyes of the child on the roof. They seem so close—to reach a tiny hand up to the cloudless black, and swim your fingers through the richest of worlds, the most unexplored of frontiers, the untrodden Realm of Gods. She loved the stars, and the stars loved her back.

Now, captive of her own mistakes, prisoner of her own mind—she rests in real, metal trammels, unaccustomed to the geometry of punishment, and alien to a boxed world. It had been ten-or-so years after she had found her sword, founded her legendary Knight’s circle, and scoured the Old Land for something worth of her usurped name. They came like a flash. Kidnapped her in and like a staccato of lightning, the rumble of thunder ringing still in her mind, the numbing sensation—she had felt as though a Spellbinder had casted upon—dulled her thoughts and sensations. Now, or, as it seemed like an eternity, she was awake.

The Princess had stopped fidgeting with her crude and rusted iron restraints, and acquiesced to her surroundings. The dungeon was always bleak and cold, incessantly attempting to bite into the Princess’s armour, and in the room was the steady coursing of the wind from a slim fenestration to the right. She was resting her head on a stone brick that especially protruded from the wall. Her Grandfather’s Sword was nowhere to be found. She found her predicament most amusing at first, but sobering up, all she could do was wait for her captors.

Her captors, she had thought to herself in a stint of dullness. What had they even looked like? She couldn’t see anything in the torrential rain of the night storm. She cursed herself silently. Looking to her right, she saw the source of the music outside—the wind that freely sought the fruits of adventure, aviary couples singing to themselves while building their nests in freedom. She looked away. It made her captivity unbearable.

The sliver of sunlight crawled through the floor, scaled the wall into a thin sheen, and dulled with the thousand-colour dusk that signals the farewell of the sun. The Princess studied the grouting of the stone brick to bide the time until she couldn’t make out a figure in the darkness. It was pitch black, and the only sound to make out was her own breathing. Hoping that this was a dream, she allowed herself to fall into a shallow sleep.

The next morning, the Princess found herself still chained up to the dungeon wall, and in a flurry of mixed anger and confusion, looked around for any sign of her captors messing about the room. There was nothing to be found, no evidence that another person—another thing—might’ve placed her here. The Princess pouted for a minute, but then she heard her stomach grumble. The poor prisoner hadn’t eaten in awhile, it seemed. Looking around again hopelessly, but perhaps just for the off-chance that They left some morsel of food for her, she sighed.

The next day came It wasn’t surprising what she woke up to. And the next day came. She stopped counting the mornings. The next day came. The Princess had known the dungeon as if it was her home. The old wooden door in front of her didn’t even look the part, and the window was a clown that endlessly made fun of her captivity. Her eyes felt swollen, her body limp, a static and amputated feeling to her legs, and a dry and barren mouth that’d forgot what it felt like to eat and drink. To ameliorate the pain that gnawed at her gut, she began to chew at her aegean-blue cape, foolishly tricking her mouth into dampening. She didn’t have the strength to tear off the fabric and chew on it, starved like an Endless Fields peasant in a drought snacking on leather, like a dog with his bone—yes, by this time, leather hide or a bone would make for a good feast at this time, thought the Princess. She had descended into minor insanity.

The Princess pondered a bit for a while, mimicking how the hermit oracles would deal with their foolish and childish philosophy. She lacked shrewdness, however. All the Princess could ever hope to think about was freedom. Okay then, maybe not her captors will arrive.

Maybe.. A.. knight? A knight. A knight?! She smiled a weak little smile, crazed to draw the corners of her lips in rehearsal for when her knight in shining armour bursted through the door, his blade draped in the crimson blood of her captors—she imagined to her satisfaction—and carrying her out to the warmth of the sun, on the soft blanket of the grass, her body cradled and caressed in his arms, her right glove unsheathed when she reaches out and lays a soft and delicate hand on the Knight’s face..

Then, it slowly dawned on her, and her smile sulked. The Princess led—used to lead—a knight’s circle. She used to hold a sword in her hands. She donned the shagged armour of a knight. No valiant hero in this life would come to rescue a Knight Princess.. The poor prisoner’s little mouth and eyebrows crumpled, and she felt her eyes shut out the cruel world, letting the little tears roll down her cheeks. Her hardy heart now felt fragile and broken. It felt like dead weight for her doomed soul. She winced at the thought, hanging her head in shame, those tears of a Princess still cascading down. Before she stopped, she kept on hitting her head against her pillow—the stone brick protruding from the wall.

Interrupting her sadness were the sudden chirps of a bird outside, which frightened the Princess at first, but now listened intently. She could hear the bird tweet from its nest on the stone, singing its little happy song for his own tiny world to hear. She laughed a weak but mirthful laugh at the bird’s liberties, and she too wished she could sing a happy little song when she comes back to the nest.

The next day came. It rained a great deal last night, and though no drop of rain penetrated the ancient stone, she was still kept awake by the howling wind and the bashing of the storm waters, despite her frail body was determined to drown her into unconsciousness. In the morning the storm abated into thin air and the Princess thought herself to be completely drained, and thus resorted to the paradise of her silent thoughts again. A sound interrupted her train of thought, a sound that came once but was unlike all other sounds she heard. It sounded like hollow wooden rods jangling together. She shook her head to make sure that she wasn’t in a fever dream, sending that soft neck-length midnight-blue hair in a flurry, and peered beyond the wooden door. The noise persisted. Then, almost prophetically, the bird’s song came back, echoing into the dungeon from his nest outside. It stirred her—some unbroken part of her—inside.

For the first time, she screamed for help. Her cracked and withered throat suddenly thrusted into a searing pain, but she rattled on her chains and made as much racket as possible. No avail. The Princess suddenly became overwrought with the intolerable pain of experiencing her helplessness, her pitiful but foolish tears, and misspent hope on anybody but herself. She was filled with determination. The Princess angled her body, and kicked the protruding brick on the wall with all her force, before enough fissures were made for her to easily break a sizeable fragment of the brick off. Her feet felt like it had stepped on burning coals, and her entire body pulsated and groaned from resorting to eating lean muscle for nutrition. Still, the mind was stronger than the body. She kept at it for however long it would take—the Princess went to the next primal phase of kicking the welded bearing of the chain to the metal plate to the wall. It seemed like an eternity. It seemed like a second. The rusty chain snapped in a moment of triumph, and the Princess’s eyes glowed in anger, the freedom of rotating and positioning your arm wherever so you please was so alien and so foreign to days of limited movement. She picked up the stone brick, ignoring the shackles and the chain that clanked to the floor, and began hacking away at the bearing of her other hand. Her arm muscles hurt, there was barely any muscle that didn’t hurt, but she was focused on the rhythmic strokes and the gritted teeth—better methods of saving herself than crying and wishing ever could.

The rusty metal trammels snapped, the dull chains’ breakage and descent to the grey floor audibly pleasing. The Princess looked at her hands, now free of the restraints, but the shackles still clung tight to her wrists. Standing up for the first time, her head began to throb from the adjustment. Her legs felt like strawberry jelly. She suddenly was real and animated. But far from effusive, the Princess regained her senses, and rotated her shoulder with a tight fist, and began to run with all she could straight through the ancient wooden door.

The hinges came off the first try, and the entrance to the dungeon fell with a thud, the Princess barely recuperated from falling on top of the door, when she wondered why the door did not fall flat on the surface. Suddenly a cold and stiff hand made out of bones quickly grabbed the edge of the board, and a skull still on his bony spine popped out of under the door, staring directly into the startled Princess, who gasped with fright. The skull opened its mandible wide, and waggled up and down. The Princess swiftly stood up, and threw the useless door to the side. The boneman was revealed to have been broken up, and it was just the upper half of his body still moving. Slightly embarrassed, the Princess stomped on the skeleton’s throat, and teared its arm and ribcage from the skull. Stepping away, she saw that the skull, despite it not being able to move, still had its mandible wide open as to form a crude smile.

She was deeply enfeebled, and clung to the wall as she went down the flight of the spiral stair chamber. There were cavities in the stone walls where little candles, perhaps dozens of them per cavity, burned slowly and dimly, oozing off wax from their ancient wicks. As she descended, more and more cavities were more frequently filled with skulls, and the stairs became darker and darker, perhaps one or two of the tealights lit the way, enveloping her in near-total darkness and loss of spatial direction. Then she heard it. First behind her, now in front—bones rattling together. Then she saw one skull next to a tealight do it—move their mandible up and down, k-k-k-k-k-k-k, cackling at her. The mechanical laughter filled the air, and then the skeletons filled her personal space and grabbed at the Princess’s shackles, grabbed at her cape, clung to her with limbs that felt no heat, skeletal snickering that impeded her frightened impetus. The blinding interstice of light beckoned her, and she reached out a free hand to grab it, flooded in the hands and skulls of the undead, reaching with all her might to grab the splinter of the bar of light, and all of a sudden a flood of beautiful sunlight invaded the dark space, and the Princess tumbled out of the tower, not a trace of bone following her. She looked at her wrists, and they were without restraints.

She walked aimlessly, getting away from the tower as far as she could before falling down and succumbing to the agonising pain. The grass beneath her felt stringy and stiff, and the blades and tips constantly poked at her neck and face. The sun excruciatingly seared her eyes, the light unbearable. She attempted to focus on the flight of the happy-go-lucky birds that emanated from the forest to stave her agony, but again to no avail. She lifted a weak head to look at the tower, and the door was wide open, with no sniggering skulls or creepy candles, but a wide spiral staircase well-lit by small and slim cathedral windows proportionally spaced paralleling the stairs. She allowed her dazed body to go limp, and starved on the ground.

By noon, she had gained perhaps 3 miles dragging her body across the ground. She never looked back to that ancient stone tower that rested on the green plains, and instead opted to exit the forest clearing. On the dimness of the forest floor, her eyes adjusted, and all around her the various inclining and declining terrain confused her. She had fled in the general direction away from the tower, and saw to no end the sight of the forest, for a second doubting her trail and going the other way. But the pain with each stroke nagged her, and an action cancelled out was energy and effort wasted. In the afternoon, she couldn’t drag herself anymore through the trees, and fell limp with her face on the forest floor. The Princess then caught the noise of what sounded like what a runnel would make. She maneuvered based on intuition, and crawled around a small rock cliff. She discovered a small brook coursing through the trees, and she quickly removed her blue glove from her hand and dipped her soft and small hand in the brook. The water was cold, but that was not the problem. The ground was too erosive, and in the water was a mixture of bark and dirt—repelling even the dirty straggler. The Princess wiped her hand with the cape, had put the glove back on, studied the direction of the water, and dragged herself on. Within minutes, a clearing of the forest—looking like pure sky—was in sight. She exited the forest, and was flabbergasted.

Not a foot away from a sheer drop, the Princess was on the ridge of a gigantic plateau, spanning the entire length of what continued on to the foothills in the east. To the north and south of her were expansive tracts of coniferous trees, miles and miles as far as the eye can see, sharpening the landscape into green tufts. The cries of animal competition echoed around the colossal basin. In the distance, the banks cradled a crystal-clear river that bended and cascaded like tendrils of pure glass, glistening off the reflection of the hazy but cragged stone patagonia that carved the horizon, silent giants that tightly scraped against the forest.

Making her way down from the eastern decline, and crawling for another hour or so until the plateau diminished with the treeline, she met face-to-face with the river, and despite the torture, got up to her knees and unsheathed the gloves once more. The small roar of the waters sounded a bit more like peace on Earth, and the cold that touched her fingertips was akin to warmth. The Princess allowed the water to gush into her hands, roll through her fingers, and splash up against her palms, before cupping a small amount and drinking out of it. She smiled in a moment of triumph, and repeated her water-drinking ritual over and over again, filling her little tum with the much-needed energy.

Walking back from the riverbank to the soft grass cradled in the clearing, the Princess was happily munching on sour bramble and hollyleaf cherry foraged from a nearby oak pocket, when she noticed that the fish trap she made earlier had caught a small trout, swimming about aimlessly. Dumping the berries and cherries, she waded into the shallow and gripped the wiggly fish out of the water, biting into its scales and ripping off a muscular piece of the writhing creature.

She kindled the fire at evenfall after going through several smooth stones. The Princess laid down on her sprawled-out roughspun cape laid over the flowers and maidenhair ferns, her arms crossed behind her head and tangled in that mess of that midnight-blue hair. The hardened Princess had taken off her heavy metal armour, leaving only the fabric of her clothing intact, but she was used to this kind of outdoor cold many times. It wasn’t not often that her and the Band of the Moon found itself kicked out of the village inn, and had to stay in fur bedrolls taking shifts throughout the night to protect the Princess. She pondered a bit more, this time more healthily feeling satisfied, and realised that she had forgotten all about her Grandfather’s precious sword. She playfully cursed under her breath, as she would around the band, but this time she really knew deep down that an irreplaceable part of the journey was lost. She would have to find, or forge, a new weapon. She writhed in disapproval from such an effortless thought.

Still, the night sky was magically beautiful. The Princess grabbed a piece of trout meat from the wooden rack, and nibbled on it while laying down and looking up. The stars had come out to play—charming, dancing, glittering and infinitesimal as always. She had learned rudimentary constellations from a travelling magic merchant from the North, and the one she made sure to remember was the North Star, by which she found with speed, from there deducing her favourite patterns in the charcoal sky—the figure of the valkyrie-warrior Daena, her sword poised at the wicked everymaker Aldin, the gryphon Sorullon with his doubloons way up high, the Archer constellation that the primitive hunters prayed to, and the five stars that formed the constellation of the Crown. She fumbled a wee hand for her own little crown on the top of her head, and slowly drifted into—finally—a warm and comfy sleep. Wrapped around, she thought, in a blanket of the astral myriad. She loved the stars, and the stars loved her back.

The Princess was stirred by an overcast that started pelting a few drops onto her face, slowly fluttering her eyelashes as the gravity of the situation slowly blanketed her. The sky was a dark blue—the sun hadn’t breached the horizon—but it was enough light more than twilight to see. In a few minutes of scattered and erratic action, she had found refuge for her things and herself under a hemlock fir, just in time when the water drops hastened into soft sheets of drizzle. Sitting against the tree trunk, she chewed on a light breakfast of bramble and cherries, surveying the panoramic sway of the river, and the immense and forested valley. The rolling hills landed with trees was home to a thriving community, under close inspection—the early morning squirrel skittered up and down the trunks, a small white butterfly navigated the maze of wood, very faint albeit noticed are birds’ nests up high, and two elk drink from a bend in the river.

The rain had diminished during civil dawn, and the heavy overcast retreated into a gray and fluffy haze up above. In the distance, massive sheets of fog lazily rolled over the jagged ridgeline, reappearing at foothill valleys and coursing through the tree lines. At this point, feeling restored and adventurous enough, the Princess studied her surroundings for the last time and skinny-dipped, quickly fording the river at a doldrum with her belongings way up in the air, supported by shivering limbs and chattering teeth. Donning her armour at the other side, she continued north into the forest.

By midmorning, the Princess’s trek—satisfying for the breadth of her soul—had completed some nine to ten and two leagues, taking time to soak in her newfound freedom. Above her, the birds had started singing their morning songs. The belts of quaking aspen and fir shimmered in the streams of the wind, rustling her cape behind her. The belts retreated as she exited the valley, going up an incline of rock and padded dirt packed down by dried out stems and wood that came from tall Redbeard Trees. She stood beneath the glittering light of a giant Redbeard. Her tough and coarse and combed wood jutted out, the recesses filled with ample moss. All around her, flecks of sunlight that were fortunate to penetrate the miles of pine leaves danced on the ground. Feeling the weight of the incline, the Princess found a sizeable walking stick and continued on, sensing the scarcity of shrubbery and foliage. The crest of the valley was near the ragged rock of the mountain range. A barren ridgeline soared above and dwarfed the Princess. Their summits coated in a shagged layer of white, the naked beauty of the up-close mountains revealed in a grassed forest clearing flummoxed her. The meadow opening was calm and serene, with alpine butterflies fluttering to and fro. The Princess took a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of mountain flowers and grass.

The descent down the valley knap was steep; the woods were densely packed on the face of the crest and the marigold sun was again replaced by the muted sunlight and ambience of faraway birds. Some decline angles were sharper than the usual, and she had to outstretch her hand against adjacent tree trunks, and sometimes impale the walking stick into the ground in front of her. It was hard at times to keep her footing, and maybe once or twice she slipped and went tumbling down to the natural landing and laying down next to her mighty stick, laughing off the pain and smiling with rosy cheeks up at the canopy. She missed her Band of the Moon and her adventures in company deeply, and she reflected back to the emotions she had felt in the tower. When the valley started to flatten out into a shallow slope her trek became easier, easier to work with and easier to rest. The inedible pine needles were replaced with swaths of oak and other broadleaf varieties. Insects buzzed around the shrubs, and a variety of small animals frolicked in the cold sun. The Princess meandered across the bowl a little bit and she stopped at an idyllic salmon brook to ease her joints and rehydrate her excursion. The water came in thick strings and bubbled down to a small pond before exiting between two moss-covered rocks down to the woods below.

All the exposed rocks that clamored into the pond were drenched with moss. She walked around the vicinity and found a slender tree rippling with berry vines. She examined some small and colourful caterpillars munching on the leaves while trails of aphids marched back and forth. The vine’s marionberries were dark and plump and tasted sweet to her pleasure. The Princess took some in the care of her hand when she noticed that some stems had their berries already plucked—an indication. At once she studied the ground and uncovered dried-up sepals of the marionberries trampled in the wild grass and ferns. Back at the brook, she washed her berries and ate them in silence, listening with an attentive ear for movement.

With the approach of a long and cold nightfall, the dim blue sky was furnished with high-flying clouds, brushstrokes suspended with magic, that were painted a pretty pink on one side. The pink slowly faded until no light passed through the clouds, and the forest dimmed into peace. The Princess—with her fill of nuts and berries—slept deeply, cuddling a tree trunk on the fringes of the treeline and draped in the warmth of her cape.

The next morning, she woke up feeling sick and vomited last night’s meal. She felt miserable and unable to walk and she broke down feeling queasy on a tree encroaching in the valley where a tarn used to be. The Princess suddenly felt the bite of the cold from a wind and she braced, clutching to her cape and shutting her eyes closed. The shivering won over her and she stumbled up and trudged up the incline in search of firewood. She had spent a great deal chipping away at the inside of a dead log overrun by foliage and decomposers for the dry chunks sheltered from the rain. The Princess was dejected and apathetic and frowned as long as her uneasy stomach willed it and forced herself to drink brookwater poco a poco.

The next morning the sun rose again on the spartan ridgeline, and the Princess felt a little better this time with her second helping of this-time roasted nuts that she made extra-sure was safe. That night she stayed up until late-late at night listening to the crackle of the fire and watching the glowing char consume the wood before they suddenly rise up into the silent and soft hurricane of embers. She continuously stoked the flames and occasionally poked it with a blackened stick to watch a flurry of embers rise up all at once like the crest of an ocean wave. She had slept with the fire going on with an active mind dreaming about her Grandfather’s sword. The Princess stirred in her sleep and when she saw the broadsword in her dreams and in real life she had tightened her grip on her detached cape and dug her face deeper into the body warmth.

She got up with a start, motivated to forget the dream, feeling pleased to stop by the stream one last time before heading out beyond the valley. The trees grew few in number as she headed for the pass. Flanked by two mountain ranges that tried to outdo the other, the Princess felt their stately presence impale her sense of status and looked up whenever she could. Her and nature struck a chord together.

In her childhood, she was reckless and adventurous to the mirth of everyone around her. Sometimes the Queen would inspect the Princess’s room and to the dismay of the King & Queen the little lass would bring in a bouquet of lavenders strewn about on her nightstand or propped up a thick stick fashioned as a sword with twine for the hilt and a twig for a crossguard. The Princess constantly demanded for her flowing midnight blue hair—often fashioned in a single braided celtic knot—to be cut to shoulder-length, but only when it seemed like they weren’t going to lecture her again on becoming a proper lady—which wasn’t often.

One day an old naturalist from up north of the Princess’s village stopped by to sell his wares in the market. Many people were interested in his exotic books documenting the ecology and Old Northern fables of dragons and beastmen. He was kind enough to gift the little blue-haired girl a map from a cartographer from a distant land. The Princess spended all night poring over the features of the map: the intricate terrain that was painstakingly detailed and rendered, the unabridged and complex legend that created whole settlements and towns and bridges out of symbols, the small nooks and crannies such as a fearsome kraken in the water, a stony dragon lurking in a mountain pass, or a castle cradled by the thick woods, and the beautiful handwritten lettering, the beauty of calligraphy shining with every label.

And she would risk a few broken bones for a few minutes looking up at the stars, by all means climbing out of a window to her roof. It was cold, very cold, always cold, always windy. But never came a night where she regretted encountering her shimmering friends up above.

Even now, do they gleam. She shaked her head to shake her daydreams and walked on by. By this time she stopped looking for footpaths and general signs of humans except for the notion that a wolf or bear—characters she weren’t eager to meet—might have eaten the marionberry. It was a sliver of chance but still it made her feel uneasy. The Princess had generally decided to wander around the mountain range, and edged near the pass doing so.

She approached the mountain pass during the hour of the day where the high sunlight struck its chords at the various fissures and protrusions on the rockface. The weathered wall was broken at one side and the Princess gazed up at a cracked and swollen and natural arch. The entrance out of the mountains was carved by thousands of years of rainwater and wind and looked as if it were going to break. On the two sides were large statues of some forgotten gods. One was a magnificent woman draped in stone robes whose extended arm was lost beneath the ground. On the opposite side, there was only a deep recess and a pile of folded fabric where the feet would be; it was a coffin for a still sentinel. She ran her hands across the rough pleats of the goddess’s robes. Moss and foliage had cut through some parts of her beauty. Underneath, there were inscriptions of runes lost in nature and time. They were very faint but ran smoothly under the Princess’s gloves.

The shadow of the mountain pass was surrounded by steep faces that only allowed slivers of muted light up above. As the Princess climbed down, she saw the small beams of light spill down into the trees that thrived below. The glen’s acoustics made it so that the place was very empty and very lonely. The rustling of the broadleaves were the only elements to break the heavy old air. Underneath the oaks were smaller wooded plants and a variety of greens in the clearings if there were any. She heard the crunching of the plants below her with every step.

The pass led to another thin stretch of pinewoods and she found another gushing river even wider than the previous one. Beyond the horizon she couldn’t see anymore of those bleak summits and assumed that it would lead right to the plains, or maybe the beach. She figured that building a raft to go downstream was the best possible course of action. She surveyed down the river for the time being and found a good workplace where shallow rock bluffs cleared the area of wild grasses. The clearing was flat and good to sleep on.

Four uneventful days were spent on that rim of the upper river. There was an endless supply of freshwater but not enough berries or fruits. The Princess’d spend most meals with small edible plants and bunches of minnow caught in the fish trap. She had a set of sturdy logs of consistent size and the Princess spent most of the previous days scrutinising her criteria of dry deadwood. On the fourth day the Princess was scavenging for materials for more twine when she noticed that a mob of deer were trying to ford the waters at dusk and dawn. Waiting for them to enter the woods so she can continue on, she suddenly felt a gale that tugged on her cape and quivered all the leaves around her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She looked up for any signs of rain but there weren’t any. She still felt an eerie presence, and looked towards the deer. One of them looked up at her with pitch black eyes and floppy ears that suddenly were erect and the two figures stood still while the river sea sloshed at the animal’s hooves. The wind came again and the deer took off, with the Princess in curious pursuit.

It looked like a beaten footpath. It was very faint but she could tell that it was used by animals for ages. The forest was getting denser and the glimmer of the sunlight that passes through the leaves above failed as hues of green swamped the air. She saw something bright up ahead and peered her eyes cautiously. Her heart raced a little bit and the armour started getting a little stiff.

It was like a garden. Bright and lush vegetation surrounded the clearing but they diminished severely at the centre. She could see stone pillars—runestones—with ancient etchings. The Princess’s eyes opened wide in surprise and she clasped her pursed lips with her hands and ran over to the centre of the stones. Her movements were shaky and rushed and full of emotion. She collapsed to the ground and knelt with her head in her hands sobbing with a mixture of joy and a cascade of relief as in front of her her Grandfather’s sword was planted firmly into the ground. It was no trick, there was no trap, she could only feel the coldness of the longsword which had felt no greater warmth until now, the blade as sharp as when she left it, the characteristically dark metal reflecting her emotion. What god must have done this, she thought out loud. The Princess was happy and didn’t feel as lonely and insecure as before. Beyond the garden were green pastures that rolled along bountiful hills. All of this was sitting under the clouds that crowded the lower end of the sky.

Another day passed and the raft was almost finished. The wood was leashed together and it looked proper but didn’t feel as so. It would take a few more sorties before it would be seaworthy. That night, the Princess drifted off to sleep in her armour with her sword by her side for the first time and drifting off she thought about the safety and refuge of civilisation. She hugged her Grandfather’s sword tightly and curled over.

The full moon that’d tread the sky began to slowly sink into the horizon. Slowly, the invisible clouds turned up gray and opaque in the dark blue hues of dawn. The sounds of the river slowly drifted to her, it came to her first. Then the mockingbirds that echo in the forest, and then the subtler noises such as the bees and the finches that skittered the sky. She stirred, sensing something heavy in the air. Smelled foul, tense and robust. She opened her eyes and saw a faint trail of smoke in the sky. It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t nature’s. She awoke with a start and slowly picked up her Grandfather’s sword and quickly looked around and studied the treeline for movement. Something didn’t feel like. It wasn’t a merchant’s fire.

In the air, a horn bellowed. Startled her and startled a flock of birds that scattered in the air.

The trees impeded any sense of location except for dead reckoning but she could tell by the mountain draft and by the smell of woodsmoke alone. She got into a stance and kept on turning her head erratically searching along the distant, vegetated and crowded terrain. She didn’t want to be caught. She didn’t want to be helped. No, the Princess thought. This was no help. She felt depleted and she could feel her resolve failing. Her stomach felt like a witch’s cauldron in the middle of a wicked potion and she felt like throwing up her guts. She gripped her sword when she saw it—the faintest figure dash from trunk to trunk. She peered. It happened in a second. An arrow whizzed by her face and the tip had cut her cheek. The Princess turned around and saw two burly men dressed in furs with their faces muddled and their bare teeth yellow charging at her with crude swords. One lunged at her and she parried it by instinct and socked the robber with all the brute force she could muster. Seeing the other one take a stab from the corner of her eye she changed position in a circle and glared through icey blue eyes. The man raised both hands up for a kill but she knew that it took much time and moved like a cat to his shoulder, but an arrow amiss caught his leg first and he crumpled. She hacked once at his neck and blood spurted from the blade and the bandit fell. Another arrow missed her foot and the Princess knew she was losing time as the arrows cornered her pattern. More bandit marauders appeared out of the treeline with war cries and their swords and warhammers up high. The Princess raced to the edge of the river amidst the flurry of arrows and her heart pounded in her ears as she tried to get the raft casted off. A bandit missed his throw of his axe and she dodged his dagger stab and kicked him away. An arrow landed on her shoulder plate and it deflected off with a dent. Another bandit came at her with full force and she could feel the grip of the raft slipping away as the outlaw hung onto her boot. She kicked him away and paddled with a steering stick away from the aggressors who splashed with heavy legs in the water, watching her slip away. More desperate arrows came and made sounds as they plunged into the water. As she moved downstream she saw men on horses follow her alongside the river, yelling remarks. A horn sounded for a second time into the forest sky, and the horses slowed from a gallop to a stop. The dark figures that watched her from the river bluffs looked ominous as they slipped away. Then, she turned around to the sound of rushing water. This is bad. Worse. The Princess was about to enter a series of river rapids. She tried to lunge for the river bank, discarding her boat, paddling as fast as she could, but she went more downstream than fording it. The river rapids took what sent them and the Princess nearly missed a shelf of rock as she plunged down under. Underneath she saw her raft and submerging she desperately swam to it gasping for air. She felt the water underneath her give in and she went under again, tossing and turning in the whitewater storm. Coughing, breathing, forgetting, she searched for any sign of how to get out, flailing among the waves and losing orientation. She saw the river ahead of her disappear, and she fell for one last time, plunging from a high waterfall down below. The air blew all the water from her damp face and she felt as if she was flying. The Princess turned in the air and she was looking up at the pretty morning sky as she fell from the falls. Suddenly, the Princess was swamped by darkness, and the portal to the Material Plane was rapidly diminishing from her sight. She then felt the weight of the landing, and it had hit her with all of its force. She saw a flash of white and her breath was knocked out of her and she fell unconscious, life slipping away by the strands into the murky deep. Floating. Drifting.

There was one quest that the Band of the Moon was eager to take that had sent her into the Sandy Seraglio. Mountains of sand that bit at the skin and would singe the eyes. It was the culmination of a quest from the small lakeside village called Brunesbrook. It was an old and forgotten port on the lake. Much less popular than its competitor, High Forest Kingdom. It was still pretty, the Princess would say to her followers. Wild mountain flowers and grasses adorned windows and railings, mosses and lichen hung from the verandas. The village jarl seemed tired. Everyone was tired. They commented of dark nightmares that hindered their sleep. Unnatural and invasive dreams.

They said the nightmares came from the lake they called Harmafregn. Floated down like mist. It was an Old Human legend that spirits lived in Harmafregn forest. When the Band of the Moon got there, mythical mist had surrounded the forests of the ice water mansion. Those who hadn’t drawn their swords already still had their hands on the hilt. One of them spotted a gloomy and rotting castle in the mist. As they approached it they saw intricate carvings on the trees and the castle gates were open. The Band of the Moon could feel their shadows. Spirits that lingered out of sight but in their senses. There lurked the Cult of Pridellius. Twisted and mutilated beings. Exiles. The Band of the Moon slayed them without hesitation.

The Princess woke up coughing with her whole body feeling like mush. She had fortunately washed up on the dim shore and she dragged her limp body to the dry dirt, and keeled over trying to catch her breath. She waited. Far away she saw the afternoon light drape down on the waterfall, which had broken up into a hazy white as it landed onto the lake. The Princess looked up and saw that the waterfall drilled into a large cavern. Inescapable from where she came from. She took a breath of air and found it damp and raspy, and in reaction her body violently coughed to choke out the water in her lungs. She felt for the soft fabric of the sheath of her blade and she found it to her relief. If she wasn’t so deprecated of her situation she would’ve brushed her lips against that precious sword already.

The Princess climbed up a couple of boulders that diminished in size as they got farther away from the light source. The sound of the mist filled the cavern with a low hum and it was pleasing to the ear, as was the wind. She didn’t need to go far up for a vantage point because she found a wide chasm out of the cavern, but it only seemed to go downwards. The Princess decided to investigate. There was something odd about the air. It was noxious, but not the bad kind. It was the thickness of the air that you would feel if you bathed nude at a warm geyser. It wrapped around you, and sort of pulls you in, the Princess thought. Silence that beckons. Her hand touched the hilt of her sword but she let go without reluctance and traversed down. Forks in the chasm led to other forks but somehow she didn’t feel the heat of embarrassment or doubt. It was deep enough that she found the end of the trail to be glowing. Slowly, she reached this incline. The walls of the caverns were dotted with small glowing plants, bright aqua in colour. Then, she saw it from the edge of a cliff.

It was the largest cavern she had ever seen. Like a grand hall or cathedral, a roof miles high, walls so large that it was hard to tell the size of the rocks that perched on them. A breadth so massive the blued fog extended out beyond the footpath below. Above, large plantlike tentacles, electric blue and faintly glowing, extended down and waved like exposed roots. Below, brittle but gargantuan mushrooms the size of trees, thin stalks drape their roofs. She cautiously made her way down, and was immediately surrounded by the tall walls the farther she walked into the chamber. It was gorgeous and otherworldly. Or perhaps there was no other word to describe it other than magical. Anyways, she smiled in awe. The turquoise bioluminescence that swathed the air was heightened and textured by the bright cerulean spores, which—finally—made the Princess sneeze.

Oops, I apologise. Excuse me.

The Princess turned around her, and checked her flanks. Who said that? She called out.

I apologise for not sensing you. You came earlier than I expected. Please, follow the path.

There was a sudden burst of violent wind and all the spores in the air cleared, mimicking a garden walkway wherein vines fanned out from supporting wooden structures over it. Mushrooms with a height that reached her thigh that were unnoticeable until now now hummed with light on the side of the trail, illuminating a path. The Princess walked up a flight of shallow stone steps—still the roof of the cavern seemed miles up high—and looked upon the sight of the face of a massive lion turtle who laid down at the opposite end of a stone arena. His largest tooth was the height of the Princess. His breathing was deep and full of resonance. His eyes slowly blinked, full with wisdom. Wisdom that was a flame, and that flame was dying out. Though he seemed majestic, it was only beyond his mane. His whole body was limp, the colossal shell on his back looked to have been still for thousands of years. The lion turtle folded his whiskers and looked down at the speechless Princess.

I have not seen a human in so long.  
What?  
One tends to lose track of time when they are in a cave.  
Are you okay? What’s happened to you—I mean, is this real? The Princess stammered in amazement.

When I was a kid, there were fairy-tales of ancient island-beasts that once lived, she said.  
Yes, once, the Lion glowered. And then the Dragons came, and wiped us out. I came to this primeval land with many of my kind, in hopes of escaping their reign. We had all split up, and I found refuge deep down here. Waiting is very different from living. Waiting for what, however, that I do not know.  
I’m sorry about that.  
Do not be sorry.  
There’s gotta something I can do.  
One day, my spirit will be free. But in the time being, here I remain.  
You called me here to help you, right? she asked.  
No. I’m afraid that that is not what today’s Fate is intended for.  
The Princess felt puzzled, and fell silent for a second.  
Can you at least tell me what this place is?  
I formed these gardens myself. They have no name.  
Why?  
Even I do not have a name.  
It must sound dreary to have no name.  
Likewise, my little dear, we are all forgotten as soon as we are remembered. I used to have a name and now I can not remember it. Sometimes I think really hard and look at my garden for as long as I need, but it never comes to me.  
The Princess thought for a moment. What is it like to be forgotten? she had asked when silence overcame the two of them.

The Lion took a deep breath, his impressive features slowly rising up. He breathed in and felt the sweat on her nape and the fear in the subtle shaking of her breathing and the stench of dirt and the aroma of rain and nuts and fragrances from the world he once knew. He closed his eyes and shifted his ancient bones, but the gargantuan boulders and stones that ensnared him creaked and groaned and weighed him down. The Lion lowered his head back down, defeated for what seemed to be one last time.

It is different from living, he finally said. There is a special kind of hurt to being forgotten. It is not blood that had spilt. Nor sword-wound. Nor burn. Nor frostbite. It is not a wound inflicted by anything, but you feel it when you are cast away. 

You feel alone. You feel distant. It is an endless nadir. You wish for things that you once took for granted. You wish to be remembered again. I can sense the sky and moon and water and earth that courses in you. I dream about them. I see them when I close my eyes. Being forgotten is worse than any physical trammel imaginable.

The Lion looked down at the Princess with a forbearing gaze.

When you are forgotten, your heart feels more crushed than the stones on your back.

The Princess looked up.

I wanna stay here.  
You cannot. You must go, said the Lion.  
Make me.  
You can move. I can not move. You have that fortune. You must use it wisely.  
I wanna stay here with you.  
My little dear, I am nothing.  
So am I.  
The Lion paused. You are worth more than what you think. This is the final task that my Ancestors have given me, it seems—to lead this young human to continue on. Tell me, are you forgotten as well? You are lost, aren’t you?  
Y-yes.  
This is not the end for you. Far from it.  
How? I’m lost. I’ve been damned into bandit territory.  
Believe me when I say—or rather, reflect more when I say that you can move. I can not. Little one, you can not give up here.  
She paused. Of course, she replied in a quieter tone.  
Then move. Climb from my head and across my shell.  
Okay. I’m really sorry to leave you, she said, hopping from his whiskers to the cranium. His fur felt soft but muddled and shaggy.  
It is better this way.  
She now began to faintly see the dense forest that’d been growing on his back.  
Goodbye.  
Goodbye, little one.

She crossed through that turtleshell forest and saw light filtered through trunks and branches on the other side. The ground was caked in moss and low grass and it was hard to tell if it was land or if she was still on his shell.

She exited the forest into the open air. The sky was blue and the deep well of a thousand acres was green. The first thing she felt was a biting downdraft that fluttered her once-soaked blue hair. Open to her was another amphitheatre of mountains, standing tall and firm like always. A flock of birds flew to them. The Princess followed suit, not hesitating to turn back. She never looked back.

The Cult of Pridellius had stolen an ancient spellbook whose spells cannot be recanted. In their journey across the sand, they were searching for it to return the spellbook, and there it was. The sunken library of Heiridion. Worn down and buried in sand. The Princess remembered strolling through the grand halls with the Bookkeeper. He explained to her about the great ancient lion-turtles that wandered the world. They have such a magnificent spirit that once they died, they roamed freer than any living thing, forever. Some resided in mountains, some in books and swords, others in ocean waters, many at the place that they once called home. You saw them on the scales of fish or in the texture of paper, on a rock-face or in the bluff of a cloud.

Later, the sliver of a silver moon hung low and slowly scraped over those mountains. The trees sang with the wind, and the owls and other night prowlers intermittently rang out into the open air. A wolf howled in the distance. All around the Princess the trees were pitch black and she could only see the light of the stars. No fire. Too many bandits. She hugged her cape closer and collapsed into the dead bark that littered the sparsely-vegetated ground.

She had slogged away from where she came from in the morning wanting to distance herself from the general direction of the bandits, but she had felt a continuous message in the air that she couldn’t escape.

There was no sleep for her tonight. She continuously sat there in the dark biding her time. Her mind was too wild and erratic, and her hands felt strangely heavy as if they needed to do something. Anything but lay still. She thought long and hard of what it had meant to stay alive. When everything settles down, not even the cold could numb the small bloody notches on her knuckles, the stinging that swathed her feet, the parched throat and lips, hair that was matted and dirty, wayworn, dented, the heavy scuffed armour, the heavy old sword, ragged. She had lost a fraction of her body weight and her wide hips felt like brittle plaster and her arms operated like sticks.

She couldn’t sleep, but she couldn’t move either. It was a sharp and odd pain that kept her anchoured and there was nothing else to discover in her mind in that dull and lonely night other than to sit and wait. In her dreams, the sky was a humble gold that blanketed the world, painted the trees, all the clouds, made all the people in the Princess’s village sleepy. All those chimneys up there that were soon to be lit by the late-night bookworms. Books. Strange inventions.

In the morning there was no water and barely any food within forage distance, and she reasoned to head on from where she came from until the valley was beginning to become dense with large sprawling ferns and bushes. None that bore any food. Figures—she hadn’t seen nor smelled any breakfast fires that would have came from the bandits. The same things she felt in the air last night came back to her. Above her, the dark blue sky started to mix and lighten with the arrival of a near-winter sun. The days were beginning to look shorter, no more was the light of the sun falling on her sleepy head in the morning. Started to wake up in darkness. Winter was bad.

She tramped through the pines and firs, the woodlands not looking any interesting than any of the others. The familiarity of openness was very soothing for her eyes, it felt like home and not at the same time. The parallax of a hundred worn trunks and the grand stature of an individual one swamped by the clouds of tree needles up above. Endless tracts of trees. Always saw them. Always will be there. Beginning and end. She continued to walk through the forest frozen in time.

The mountains began to slope down and flatten out by the time the sun slipped down to kiss the horizon and to cast out a thousand vibrant hues of red. She figured the bandits were a day’s pace behind and they would’ve thought the same too and set camp, so she thought a fire might be okay. Still, she didn’t feel absolutely safe going as the crow flies. Started collecting firewood. The Princess went downhill and found another river—a lazy gray serpentine, slow and shallow. The water tasted good and it helped her cope with her aching body. Unlike the other rivers she had seen, the banks were rocky and little blots of land smothered in wild grass jutted out of the shallow river. In the distance above the forest canopy, the Princess could see a dark and large building in the distance. But it was nightfall, and it was dangerous to roam in the dark.

The Princess looked down and realised what she was doing: standing on her tippy-toes on one foot with hands outstretched, balancing precariously on a bankside rock. She had to laugh a little because she hadn’t felt silly in forever. All of a sudden the rock underneath her wobbled and she slipped and fell into the water.

The Princess next to the fire, annoyed, chewed on plant roots sitting on her cape naked. She showed a hint of a smile through the chewing. How silly of her. She exhausted the brands of the fire and piled embers on top of it to keep it alive and threw her cape over herself. Though the night was cold she cocooned herself in her cape to a great measure. Sweat began to drape over all the crevices, getting into her scalp and tender nape. She moved to a comfortable sleeping position and hugged the cape tight pressing her nude body against it. Calm and collected breathing from soft lips and she shifted once more and scraped her small breasts against the stuffy roughspun fabric. Cuddling bare and shut out. No one to save her. She was a magnificent pearl nestled in a rugged oyster.

At daybreak she was happy that her clothes were dry and she’d discarded the fire and had set off to a comparably very cold outside. With her back against a tree she kneeled down and urinated, head low and looking at the ground—focusing on dead leaves and broken twigs. She stopped to admire a banana slug that went up the bark on the tree in front of her, and looked back down. Her exhales were smoke and her nose stung red. Getting up, she took in as much air as possible into her lungs and sighed a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to waste time and began to slog through the wildwoods. The clouds that stirred above created small raindrops here and there, and she felt a few grace her cheek at random intervals.

She’d got to the building within the forest glade. The tall structure was made of stone and was open and crumbling. It was very much like a watchtower, except there was no watchmen, and it was likened more to a temple. Small hand-picked rocks lined what once might’ve been a garden, and the lantern lines running from the top of the temple down to the ground fluttered in the breeze, the telltale breeze of rain that was brewing above. Religious symbols appeared at certain wooden posts placed at the confines. She brushed her hands against one that looked like a moon and suddenly she heard a rustle in the leaves and she quickly turned around and drew that black sword. Her heart was racing as she looked around frantically. She calmed down when she saw a four-legged figure within the woods. Just a dumb fox.

Later the Princess looked out beyond and watched the rain fall straight down, casting sparks of water wherever they fell. Leaves of plants were battered quietly, and the old building was leaking. She went up the rickety wooden stairs to the second floor and looked out the balcony, the dense smell of nature’s earthy fragrance around her.

The sunset was brilliant again as the sky cleared up and the storm moved along. The Princess estimated about 2 hours of natural sunlight before it went dark, and went up to a fir branch and hacked it off, gathering the ingredients to make a fire. Out of curiosity, she checked the lanterns and was surprised to see that the small candles were inside. She quickly fashioned a torch with the fir sap and went around with small twigs quickly lighting the tealight lanterns inside and out. She stepped back after lighting the last one outside, and saw an old but peaceful temple under the night sky wrapped around with dim and colourful lanterns flickering on their ropes. It was an ethereal beauty, and if it really was a sacred place she went inside to the weird scripts on the wall in the main hall and sat on her legs and bowed and asked both the old gods and the new if she could stay at the temple overnight in safety. She looked up and around. No wind. Nothing. She sighed, and went upstairs. There were no rooms—only two floors. It was open and continuous and she sort of liked that. She collapsed down onto the floor and slipped into a dream.

But there was no dream tonight. Only a forgetful few unquestionable seconds of black.

Her eyes slowly opened, letting in light slowly, soaking up the sun and the background, and then suddenly widened in a mixture of surprise and fear. Circling her were dark claws on shaggy paws, belonging to unkempt fur. The fox—no—the wolf. It sulked around her. She could feel the sweat starting to come and the adrenaline kicking in, dropping her stomach. The Wolf stopped for what seemed to be an eternity, and finally decided to nonchalantly trot down the stairs. The Princess quickly drew her sword and waited for the Wolf to emerge from the stairs and attack her. No dice. Why? She felt angry.

Walking down the stairs slowly with a self-made atmosphere of intensity, she exited the temple and saw that the wolf was standing right next to a slumped figure on the ground. She dropped her stance to just purely carrying her sword and walked up to the creature in disbelief. It was a dead bandit, gnarled and bitten and dead. His face laid in the grass. Upon closer inspection, the kill was from last night. She looked around, and saw that many more bodies laid in the bloody splatter of rustled leaves. Emerging from the trees were a couple more white wolves. They all looked at the Princess with the same eyes. The Princess wanted to break the gaze and moved back from the first corpse she found, when she realised something.

The Princess went up to one of the wooden poles with the religious depictions and connected the poles together by drawing a line with her sword. Not a single bandit crossed the perimeter of the temple. By the old gods and the new, she whispered to herself, and looked up at the pack of dire wolves.

They’ll never sing stories of this day, or any of these days.

The mountain tapered a little bit, and she realised that she was exiting the forest into soft valleys that curved and wandered. Giant hills that scooped and bellowed in the howling wind, everything underneath still as stone.

The Princess balled her fists through her gloves, then relaxed them a little bit. At the top of an especially steep hill, she allowed herself to breath in deep and long. Her chest rose and her chin rose to touch the sky. A deep breath thickened by the coign of vantage. She breathed in crystal clean air from an arctic glacier from her nose, and exhaled black, toxic air from her mouth.

As she traversed through the grass and wildflowers, the mountains and wildwoods slowly receded away from her, until it was just a thin line that rested on the hilly horizon.

On the foot of hill was a small and slow stream, and The Princess could see down ahead of the stream that the hills flattened down into fog. She looked down to look at her reflection, and washed her face and hands. Fog, she kept on thinking. But as she walked down, the fog began to take detail, and she realised that the fog was the ocean. She could hear it. One curve of the stream had a bend in a cobblestone path right next to it, to which she climbed onto, and started to walk to the ocean. She felt fiddle-footed, but only just a little bit.

The lone Princess walked into the old fishing town under the damp and gray sky. The shallows in the water were filled with longboats and small fishing rafts that had their small canvas sails doused, some fluttered. The soft rain above sent a waftage that was deep, natural, and calming. Watermen played backgammon outside of an establishment, and windjammers busied themselves on the docks, while the longshoremen talked and sulked. But all looked very peaceful in the pluvial atmosphere.

Where am I? She asked a group of three old men playing cards.

You’re asking where you are with a crown on your head?  
Keloa, you’re out of your mind.  
Please, I just need to know where I am, so I can find my people.  
Keloa, you’re in Heartsbrook. In the High Forest Kingdom.  
The.. High Forest Kingdom?  
Yes.

She allowed her head to hang as a tear rolled down past her trembling mouth.

Without bothering to eat, she stopped at an inn and slept all day and night, grateful that the innkeeper’d admitted her in for free, recognising her immediately. In the morning, she asked the card-playing men for coin for fare across the lake to the High Forest Kingdom.

In the early morning rain, the High Forest Kingdom market bazaar was softly lit by sodden lanterns and slow-burning coal that charred pork and beef for wanderers. Above the houses, the High Forest Kingdom Castle rose in a triumph of stone and metal. Tired of browsing unbuyable bread and meats and fruits, the Princess hurried off towards the castle in the dim dawn.

Not even bothering to cordially address her arrival to the front gate guards—partially because it was known throughout the Kingdom that the Band of the Moon viciously advocated the Princess as the real heir to the throne—the Princess rounded around to the side of the castle, and jumped through the bush wall in a shimmer of water when no one was around. She arrived at the other side, in the castle garden. She began her ascent up the vine lattice, hoping that the dimness of the early morning would shield any onlookers. The higher she got, the more slippery it became, and when the lattice ended, she had to cling to wet stone and wood. But it wasn’t like she had done this before.

The Princess shimmied across the castle wall, and climbed onto a lone balcony. Slowly, she opened the balcony door, and inside, the Human Princess stirred awake with the sudden cold draft. The Human Princess rubbed her eyes in the new light, wrapping a free arm around her topheavy body.

The Knight Princess sat in warm clothes brought to her, and she sat in a chair alone wrapped in a blanket. The silk felt plush and slick, and the blanket was of impeccable quality against roughspun tunic, which was often itchy. The door opened, and the Human Princess brought in a tray.

Bread’n water’ve been just fine. It’s too early for you to cook.  
Nonsense. Please, enjoy this.  
It’s.. good.  
Is it?  
The first real meal I’ve had in days.  
You poor thing. I’ve been making old-world dishes lately. Father lets me use the old cookbooks from time to time. The older ones are just so simplistic. They’re great.  
Can I have what’s in that pitcher?  
It’s water.

A little while had passed, and the clouds and rain abated. The sun was beginning to rise up over the horizon’s fog—it’s brightness shrouded, and only the bare orb of deep red crawled out. The sky began to lighten to a morning blue, and pink began to slowly seep under.

How is Father?  
Hmph. I don’t know. He never tells me anything about what’s going on around the Kingdom. I have to rely on the townsfolk for that. I never get taught on how to wield a sword, or carry a bow, so you are very fortunate.  
Am I? Is that so?  
I long to be free, just like you. Going around on your own adventures, doing your own things.. living.. your own life.  
Even if I was wrong?  
Even if you were wrong. That’s the duality of freedom.

The Knight Princess looked out to the sun from the balcony that the two princesses shared. High above, the Kingdom seemed small, and all of its inhabitants dwarfed by their houses, houses dwarfed by trees, trees dwarfed by the endless sky.

Have you ever looked at the stars? The Knight Princess said.  
Hm?  
Have you ever looked at the stars?  
Well, yes. I had to study astral bodies and constellations, like how sailors use them like a compass—  
That’s not what I meant. I mean, in your free time. Have you ever seen them.  
Do you.. Do you mean, like stargazing? A fool’s hobby?  
I suppose. Stargazing.  
Never had I taken you for a stargazer.  
One of the fondest memories I had was looking at a shooting star. Have you ever seen one?  
No, what are they like?  
Incredible beyond your wildest dreams. I’ve only ever saw three of them in my entire life.  
Are they really like what the books say? Like.. as if they were brilliant sparks of white?  
They come and go. Only for a second or so.  
That doesn’t sound very incredible to me.  
I’ve caught them when I was looking out from my bedroll, almost falling asleep, and then I see them. At first, I’m surprised, because I think myself wrong. But then I truly believed that I did see a shooting star. And I smile.  
They sound unpredictable. No wonder they are so rare, the Human Princess sighed.  
But there was this one time, this one time..  
Hmm?  
It was when I was a child. When I was living in a small village. I liked stargazing because I thought it looked pretty. I raise my hand. And I trail my finger under the sea of stars. It was fun finding shapes in the night. So, I would often sneak out of bed to look at the stars. It was only me and them. One night, I got the feeling to do it again, but the feeling was really different this time. I counted double the seconds it took for my mother to go to sleep, and I went outside. It was freezing cold outside. But seeing the night sky was just worth it. Even for a second. All doubts washed away. Then I saw it. It streaked across the black in a furious flash of white. And then it was gone. Just like that. It came and went.  
Wow.. the Human Princess breathed out, looking at the rising sun.  
The best part about these shooting stars, is that they are fundamentally different than regular stars.  
How so?  
Regular stars you know, right? They will always be there.  
Yes.  
There are old books that show what constellations there are, and they are still here.  
Yes.  
Some stars have names.  
Yes, the Human Princess responded.  
But shooting stars.. They have no names. So it’s up to you to remember them. Only you have seen them. Their individual memory. It’s yours. They were meant to be forgotten in the first place.  
The Human Princess looked to her. But the contradiction is that you remember their presence.. Even if it was for a flash..  
Yes, the Knight Princess nodded.

There were stories of a hooded figure that would try to recruit other knights into a group called “The Band of the Moon”. Otherwise, in payment in the form of a drink you could let this hooded figure tell you stories of her glory days, and sometimes she would talk about the days following her imprisonment in the tower, but also how in those days that she didn’t feel like a princess and she only felt like a knight instead. How she had lost nearly everything, how she had felt deranged and forgotten and worthless and alone and she had to retreat all the time because of it. You could see her face but not her eyes in the candlelight and you can see her lips purse tight and her head lower down.

The young girl with long blue hair stood on the roof looking up at the stars. A princess with no kingdom to claim. No knight to rescue her. That’s how it’s always been. Now she has a broadsword in her hands.

There were tracts of woodlands that were deep and mystifying. Between them snaked stone—the spines of gods asunder jutting out from the Earth. Ancient to the dragons as the dragons were to humans.

The fog rolls over, lazy. Sleepy. Creeps through the jagged Patagonia that rises above the cascading glens, broken by trout brooks and bandit camps.

The whisper of the wind that courses through the wood, the patter of the rain against the thousand-fir needles, and grey sky churns as long as it should.

Gently, gently, gently, the fog makes its way down to the valley—caked in snow and ice brought from the jagged Patagonia that surrounds it. The rain is soft, soft, soft. The cold Earth crumbles in your hand, the smell of moss and the gloom of grey amber.

South of the white-fissured peaks that scorn the river gorge, where salmon course against the patter of the snow. East of Heimgaard, tucked away and sheltered from the northern cold, the fog rolls over. Lazy. Creeps through the jagged Patagonia that rises above the cascading glens, broken by trout brooks and bandit camps.


End file.
